Anthropologists are divided into two schools on the origins of kissing, one believing that it is instinctual and intuitive and the other that it evolved from what is known as kiss feeding, a process used by mothers to feed their infants by passing chewed food to their babies' mouths.[1]Cesare Lombroso, Italian criminologist, physician and founder of the Italian School of Positivist Criminology, supported this idea.[2]

The earliest reference to kissing-like behavior comes from the Vedas, Sanskrit scriptures that informed Hinduism, Buddhism and the Jain religion, around 3,500 years ago, according to Vaughn Bryant, an anthropologist at Texas A&M University who specializes in the history of the kiss.[3]

Around half a century later, affectionate mouth-to-mouth kissing was first described in the Hindu epic, the "Mahabharata".[4]